Austin PPS blogs — Dan

A while back, Michael Albert wrote a piece arguing for the creation of a new International Organization for a Participatory Society.  I reacted rather negatively to it when I heard about it, because I felt that it glossed over the important things, the things that individuals advocating a Participatory Society are currently struggling with in favor of hypothetical problems that nobody is currently struggling with (e.g. how to handle fissioning a larger PPS into multiple smaller PPS’s).  Today, I’d like to suggest an alternative.

I’m suggesting an alternative because I think that there’s a problem; there’s a lot of interesting people with interesting ideas writing and thinking about parecon and participatory society; we all face similar problems in advocating parecon, as became apparent at the ZSchool last summer.  But we don’t have any mechanism for working together to overcome these problems.

So, I would say that the first things an IOPS would need is better communications:

• There is already an e-mail list for people interested in parecon that Marcus started (to get on that list, e-mail Marcus.  The e-mail list is good for back-and-forth discussion of issues.  It would be good to promote this e-mail list better, and to have it under the aegis of an IOPS, so that there would be a good succession plan if Marcus needs to give up administering it.
• There is the planet blog aggregator.  The planet is good for quick notes that you don’t really know if anybody will read, or you don’t necessarily intend anybody to respond to, so that others can get a feel for what’s going on in the minds and lives of people who advocate parecon.
• There needs to be a website with static content, so that new people can more easily discover the first two components, as well as so that they can read information that doesn’t change from month to month (e.g. a guide on how to start a PPS).
• There needs to be a place for people to collaborate on document creation.  Creating useful advocacy materials is one of the most time-consuming aspects of any PPS and we’ve all been hindered by our inability to work together to create the best ones.
• There needs to be more live communications.  I suggest a monthly internet conference call, for anybody who wishes to join.  This is one of the best ways to facilitate the creation of common projects and goals.

That’s it.  That’s the sum of my proposal for an IOPS.   Dues, limitations on whose a member, how to fission different PPS’s and all of that, can come later, if the first part gets off the ground.  If enough people respond positively, it should be pretty easy to establish all five of those bullet points.  But without communications, there will be no organization.  With communications, the organization can come together at its own pace, as there is a need for more work on infrastructure and process.

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